Edgar Allan Poe Nemesis

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic best known for his poetry and short stories of mystery and horror. He is regarded as the creator of the detective fiction genre and was a major contributor to the early development of science fiction. Throughout his short stories and poems Poe expresses a wide range of messages and ideas; however, one common theme expressed in Poe’s stories is the concept of a nemesis appearing as a doppelganger or counterpart to another living person. In his writing, Poe’s protagonist closely identifies with the antagonist and vice versa. The idea of a protagonist going up against their counterpart occurs in stories such as “The Tell-Tale Heart,” The Purloined Letter,” and “The Fall of the

In the story, Mr. D, a political opponent of the French Queen, steals a letter from the queen and uses it to blackmail her to reach his political needs. The queen and her people know Mr.D has stolen the letter but refrain from taking it back openly out of fear that the contents of the letter may be revealed to the public. The Minister hides the letter in his apartment confident no one will ever find it. However, Dupin is able to discover the location of the letter in no time at all because he understands just how Minister D’s mind works and thinks. After finding the letter, Dupin replaces the original with a replica, endangering the Ministers life whenever he uses the fake letter to blackmail the queen. When asked how he was able to find the letters whereabouts Dupin responds “given his knowledge of the Minister and his ways of thinking, after the Prefect's first visit with Dupin, he had deduced that the letter must, in fact, be hidden in plain sight (“Overview: 'The Purloined” 1). Ultimately, Dupin accomplishes all this because he shares the same intellect and interests as the Minister and possesses the same poetic

In the story, the narrator visits Roderick who announces that Madeline has passed and he has entombed her in a coffin down in the basement. However, the narrative hints that Madeline is still alive as she expresses a “faith blush” just as they close the lid to her coffin. It appears as though she is suffering from catalepsy; a medical condition that places the body in a trance like state and slows bodily functions such as breathing, which simulates death. After entombing his sister, Roderick becomes fearful, wild, and agitated; he claims to hear sounds coming from the tomb down in the basement. The narrator pays no attention to him, but late one night “in a final cry, Roderick screams, ‘Madman! I tell you she now stands without the door!’ Madeline appears when the door is blown open. She lunges toward him and they fall to the floor, dead” (Mowery 1). The links and similarities between Roderick and Madeline are too obvious to ignore, there are strong psychological and sexual links between the two. For one, their birth and death occurred at the same time, both emitted feelings of gloom and doom, and they are able to detect each other’s presence. When Roderick announces that Madeline has come for him, she appears just as he predicted. In the end, the